Welcome back, Nick

It’s not often that this editorial page takes space to welcome a newsroom colleague back to the journalistic trenches. But sports columnist Nick Canepa is a breed apart. And we almost lost him. So his return to the pages of the U-T San Diego is something special.

As Canepa writes in his own “thank you” column on A1, when he was hospitalized Feb. 27 for necrotizing pancreatitis one of his doctors estimated his chance of survival at less than 20 percent. Another put it at 3 percent. Scary stuff. But after two months in two hospitals and four more months of recuperation at home, he’s coming back to work.

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We fully expect to still see Canepa’s crusty commentary on all things Chargers and Padres and Aztecs. When we see him in the U-T hallways, we fully expect to still be the target of his unrelenting jabs at the editorial board. But what he went through will change a man. We think there will be a bit of softness in there, too.